Nutrient recycling

Closing nutrient cycles is essential to develop a more efficient and sustainable food and feed production systems and protect the environment. At the moment, nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, essential to life, are lost along the entire food chain.

The transition to a more circular economy by means of resource recovery can change this and boost the bio-economy efforts in the EU. However we need more action to develop a holistic approach to nutrient management.

From the Nutrient Recycling Community to the European Sustainable Nutrient Initiative

In 2022, the Biorefine Cluster Europe, coordinated by Ghent University (Belgium), and the H2020 FERTIMANURE project, led by the BETA Tech Center (Spain), launched the Nutrient Recycling Community (NRC), a platform aimed to exchange knowledge and good practices and foster collaboration between initiatives and projects around nutrient recycling in Europe.

The NRC has recently been re-branded into the European Sustainable Nutrient Initiative (ESNI) to acknowledge the interconnection with the annual ESNI Conference, launched by the BCE in 2019 to bring together EU projects, stakeholders and EU officials with the ambition to keep nutrient management high on the EU agenda!

As core part of this initiative, the ESNI community set up 4 Working groups, led by European projects, discussing major challenges with an impact on the nutrient recycling and recovery. At present, the following working groups are active:

  • Technologies for nutrient recycling coordinated by FERTIMANURE;
  • Agronomic performance of fertilising products coordinated by LEX4BIO;
  • Sustainability assessment coordinated by NOVAFERT;
  • Policy coordinated first by NUTRI2CYCLE and currently led by RENU2CYCLE.

ESNI Mission and Vision

ESNI aims to foster collaboration among European entities engaged in nutrient recycling, facilitating the exchange of valuable experiences and identifying knowledge gaps to guide future research

Working Groups

Online and physical meetings are regularly organized to discuss several issues on the topics related to nutrient recycling.

Get to know more about the past and upcoming activities by clicking here.

Do you want to join our working groups? Click here

Why join us?

The ESNI Community is a platform that offers EU projects, companies, research institutes and experts the opportunity to share knowledge, achieve common objectives and raise their voice towards EU policy makers.

Contact us at info@biorefine.eu to know more.

News

7 European Research Projects give joint feedback on the Nitrates Directive Evaluation
12 03 2024
The European Sustainable Nutrient Initiative (ESNI), part of the Biorefine Cluster Europe, acted as...
ESNI Community
ESNI 2024 Conference on 18 and 19 September
07 03 2024
Growing the future of nutrient recovery and nutrient recycling....
The 2023 ESNI conference calls for clear legislation to drive nutrient recycling forward and to realise more sustainable and resilient farming systems
31 10 2023
The 2023 ESNI conference calls for clear legislation to drive nutrient recycling forward and to real...

Events

International Conference on Renewable Resources & Biorefineries (RRB): 5-7 June 2024

The 20th edition of the International Conference on Renewable Resources & Bi...

18th IWA World Conference on Anaerobic Digestion

"Bridging waste to value through anaerobic digestion"

...
PERM6 becomes NERM (Nutrients in Europe Research Meeting)

NERM - Towards closing nutrient cycles for a sustainable future, from R&D to implementation.<...

Publications

ALG-AD Policy Report
ALG-AD Safety Analysis: Digestate and Algal Biomass Produced by The Three ALG-AD Pilots
Biorefine Cluster Bulletin ‘January – February 2024’

Relevant projects

ALGONET: Indo-Belgian Network on Enhancing the Biotechnological Potential of Microalgae

ALGONET is a collaborative network for the exchange of knowledge between Belgian and Indian resea...

AlgaeProBANOS: Accelerating algae product development for a more sustainable future

The mission of AlgaeProBANOS is to demonstrate viability and market ac...

LIFE byProtVal – Protein recovery and recycling from animal by-products processes

According to the European Fat Processors and Renderers Association (EFPRA), 17 million tonnes of...

Multimedia / Video